Manchester Airport Aim High

Manchester airport have set a goal during their summer schedule of 20 million passengers in the year. This goal comes after the introduction of 17 new destinations, in summer alone the Manchester airport expectations are extremely high with them suggesting that they will have up to 14 million passengers in this summer alone! They’ve also reached these figures due to the fact in year on year increase Manchester airport has seen a 4.5% increase on the traffic from 2012 to 2013, this is a massive increase in terms of airport passengers.

There are several new destinations that Manchester are expecting this summer including Athens with Aegean Airlines, Cairo with new airline EgyptAir, and Keflavik, Prague, Moscow and Venice with easyJet on top of several Thomas cook flights to different Caribbean Islands these new flights give many the option of travelling to Manchester rather than too a London airport which can be much more convenient as London is an awkward and busy place to travel too. The airport has also launched a large ad campaign to make sure these new destinations are heard and known about with their controversial campaigns targeting other airports within their catchment area.

This increase would mean a lot to Manchester as the airport has seen an increase in passengers every month for the last 11, recently overtaking Stansted in yearly passenger amount which was once dubbed as the fastest growing airport, this meant that Manchester airport was moved to the 3rd busiest airport in the UK rankings. The question is could Manchester compete with the likes of Gatwick the airport that is currently rated 2nd in the busiest airport UK rankings? Gatwick is on 34 million passengers far in the distance with a large amount more passengers than Manchester but at the rate Manchester is going if the yearly increase keeps at around 5% it won’t take long before 20 million a year passengers turns into 34 million a year, watch out Gatwick the gateway to the north is coming!